India plans to speed up safety testing and approvals of electronic devices, including smartphones and headphones, to reduce their time to market. It can currently take up to 20 weeks for consumer electronics to pass safety tests, but new approvals could reduce that to three days.
The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), the country’s central agency responsible for setting quality and safety standards, has considered a pilot project to scrap the existing sequential testing model and introduce parallel testing for electronic devices in the South Asian market.
Like reported by Reuters, BIS held a meeting this week with representatives of India’s Ministry of Technology, industry group MAIT and key representatives of the electronic hardware industry, including Apple and Samsung, to discuss the project.
BIS and the technology ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
While headphones are likely to be the first devices to pass the new test pattern, the standards agency may consider expanding the product list over time, MAIT said in a statement.
In the current practice of sequential testing, a device goes through a series of tests one after the other to obtain BIS certification, which is mandatory for all devices to be commercially available in the country. MAIT suggested the government reduce that time by considering parallel testing, where the product is tested simultaneously for different parameters set by the agency, group president Nitin Kunkolienkar said in an interview with TechCrunch.
“We need to move away from the legacy method of testing products and introduce new technologies and testing methodology that should not compromise the country’s security, but also should not impede the country’s trade and business and deprive citizens of products , which I want,” he said.
The executive said that implementing the new model could help reduce testing times from 20 weeks to three days, depending on the product.
India is the world’s second-largest smartphone market after China, with a user base of more than 600 million, according to Hong Kong-based analyst firm Counterpoint.
Companies like Apple, Samsung and Xiaomi are already competing for market share among consumers in the country. A shorter turnaround in testing and safety would mean faster approvals and potentially faster time to market, more closely aligned with global launches, said Prabhu Ram, head of the Industry Intelligence Group at market research firm CyberMedia Research. to TechCrunch.
“For Indian consumers, the new faster testing and certification timelines will result in shorter wait times for the latest consumer electronics products,” he said.